


You See The Ugliest Parts Of Me And You Don't Look Away

by xoxoLibro



Category: Yellowstone (TV 2018)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, F/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xoxoLibro/pseuds/xoxoLibro
Summary: Beth and Rip are trying to navigate each other after the attack by the Beck Brothers. Now, it's time to see if they can bridge the gap that has always kept them from taking the next step.Can Rip accept that he is worthy of being part of the Dutton family?Can Beth let down her walls enough to let him all the way in?This is a sweet piece about two broken people coming together, finally willing to trust and to love freely. And I'm working up to a little sexy times...because that's how these two connect best!
Relationships: Beth Dutton/Rip Wheeler
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	1. Chasing Her Is Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I'm 10,000% addicted to these two broken and beautiful humans. This takes place after the attack by the Beck Brothers in S2, so there will be a few small spoilers.
> 
> If you've seen that episode, you know how crazy charged and emotional it is. I watched it twice. It was ELECTRIC. And then I had to write a little happy for these two. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Fuck, his feet hurt.

It had been a long ass day, and even though the shadows were stretching long across the valley, Rip and the rest of the hands were still out patching another goddamn hole, in another goddamn fence. 

What he needed most was for the cattle to stay where he put them. 

Since that wasn’t going to happen, he should probably get himself a new pair of boots. These were going on three years now, and you could only glue a sole back on so many times before it got fucking embarrassing. 

Maybe he’d go on his next day off. 

Rip snorts to himself, waiting for Jimmy to get the next post in place. The only days he had ever taken off were when he’d gone back to see the headstones he’d commissioned for his mom’s and brother’s graves, and that time he’d had the flu so bad the foreman had ordered him to stay in bed so he wouldn’t shit himself and his horse in one go. 

Jimmy holds up the metal post and Rip hefts the post driver over the top, sliding it down into place.

Come to think of it, Beth had mentioned taking him shopping once or twice. He might just let her, one of these days.

With a breath, Rip raises the heavy steel tube high and slams it down, driving the post half into the ground. 

“Rip.” Jimmy slaps at his shoulder and Rip growls in annoyance, lifting the post driver for another hit.

If this goes in crooked because Jimmy is fooling around, Rip will…well, he’s too fucking tired to think of something good enough, but whatever it is, Jimmy won’t like it.

“I, uh, I think she…”

“We got company,” Lloyd calls from a few posts down.

Rip turns to see Beth riding toward them across the field, and he does his best to ignore the way his heart trips up in his chest. She’s wearing jeans that might as well have been painted on, boots that haven’t seen near enough horse shit to merit the name, and that stupid brown felt hat she knows he likes, even though it’ll fall apart the first time it gets rained on. 

She’s prettier than a Montana sunrise.

Jimmy’s head snaps around, mouth hanging open, and Rip stands up straight, thinking maybe he just said that out loud. But Jimmy just looks back at Beth, the same stupid look on his face, and Rip realizes she’s stopped her horse fifteen feet away. Waiting for him.

Shoving the heavy post driver into Jimmy’s chest hard enough to make him rock back a step, Rip kicks his way through the grass. She’s got that hungry look in her eyes, the one that means she’s either about to eat him alive or fuck him so hard he can’t walk straight, and he’s pretty sure he’d enjoy one just as much as the other.

Sparring with her is almost as good as the sex any day.

“Somethin’ I can do for you, Beth?” Rip asks, reaching out to stroke her horse’s neck. He stands with his back to the crew, so she’s the only one who can see his eyes rake across her body everywhere he won’t let himself touch in front of the men.

Her full lips quirk up at the corners, and he wishes he could tell her just how pretty she looks, but he isn’t too sure where they stand at the moment.  
“Ride with me, cowboy?” 

Rip scans her face for a hint of what she’s after. “Everything alright?”

The bruises from the Beck Brothers have mostly faded now. But the image of her on that table, screaming into the face of that fucking animal in tactical gear, mindless of the gun pressed up under her chin, that image will never fade, no matter how many years Rip has left on this earth. 

With a sniff, he steps back, dropping his hand before the mare can sense his killing mood. Last thing he wants is to spook her horse. Beth’s eyes narrow, sensing the shift in him and he has to look away from the fresh scar on her right cheek.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Rip catches his men standing around watching. “Don’t remember tellin’ you fuckers it was break time,” he barks and they scramble back into action.

It would’ve been easier on his heart if she had covered the evidence with makeup, but Beth never wanted easy. She wore the cuts and bruises just like she wears her high heels and her curse words. She thinks if all people ever see are sex and sharp edges, they won’t notice the damn-near perfect woman underneath.

Lucky for Rip, that shit never worked on him. 

“Something have to be wrong for me to want a little company?” Her voice is casual and he wonders just how close to the knife’s edge he is. She hasn’t spoken to him since he left her bed a few days after the attack.

The bed was just too soft. Waking up with her nuzzled up tight to his side, it was too close to his dreams—gunshot wound aside—for comfort. So, he left before she could ask him to leave. Before her dad started asking questions. Before someone else reminded him that this kind of happiness wasn’t for people like him.

“Suppose not.” Rip nods.

“You telling me no, then?”

She cocks her head, and Rip is smart enough to read the dare in her green eyes. But there’s something else brewing under the surface, and he’s just curious enough that he decides to cut out on work a little early.

“For you honey, it’s never a no.” Rip turns back to his men. “Lloyd, make sure these fuckers finish up here before heading in. Y’all can sleep in an extra hour tomorrow.”

The men whoop and Beth smiles. “That extra hour for them or for us?” 

He winks in answer and heads for his own horse. 

“Catch up, Rip,” Beth calls after him, kicking her horse into a trot. 

He lets himself watch her for a minute, fighting a smile at the sight of her back on a horse after all these years. She still sits a bit stiff, but at least Walker gave her the confidence to keep trying. Slinging himself up into his own saddle, he decides he isn’t going to think about what else Walker gave her. 

Rip had outlasted him, just like he would every other man Beth decided to chew up and spit out. And today he was the one she wanted chasing her. That would just have to be enough.


	2. A Happy Hour Picnic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rip doesn't expect Beth to be the one to make the next move...to make the BIG move.

Beth knows Rip could’ve caught her at least a mile back, but he lets her hang on to the lead. It pleases her more than she would ever let on.

When she finally stops, it’s on the bank of a creek cutting through the far corner of the valley, under some big, shady tree he would probably know the name of. 

As far as she’s concerned, the breeze is nice here and the sound of the creek is peaceful, so she dismounts and gets to work spreading out the blanket she’d packed. She’s settled in, a bottle of whiskey and two high-ball glasses set out beside her, when she hears his saddle creak and his boots hit the ground.

“What’s all this?”

“A picnic. You ever been on one before?” Beth glances over her shoulder, trying not to let on how much her heart races at the sight of him, tall, dark, and rugged enough to make the mountains behind him look tame.

“Not one with company as pretty as yours,” he says, dropping a kiss on her hair before groaning on his way down to the ground. “You pack any food in there, or just the whiskey?”

“I didn’t pack you a fucking a lunch, Rip.” She twists off the top and pours them each a glass. “It’s a happy hour picnic.”

He laughs and takes off his hat, raising his glass to her before taking a sip. 

Beth knows she’s smart as hell, but no one has ever thought she was funny. Except Rip always laughs. He laughs when other people would get hurt. It’s like whatever digs she can get in, he just takes them, and he keeps on taking them till she feels better. Till she doesn’t have any mad left in her. 

And then she can just be happy. 

With him.

All the words she came out here to say dance on the tip of her tongue, but Beth isn’t interested in immediate gratification, not today. There’s something about this moment, the before, when she knows what’s coming and he doesn’t, and it’s a moment she wants to savor.

So instead, she lays down on her side, facing him, and tastes the warm, honey-colored liquor. She watches him as he watches the sunset dance across the water below. He looks tired today, the creases a little deeper at the corners of his eyes.

“Not much for small talk, are you?”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Ain’t something I would put on my resume.”

“Resume, huh?” Beth nudges his boot with her own. “You looking for a new job?”

Smile still in his eyes, Rip meets her gaze. “I’d never leave.”

And she knows he isn’t talking about the ranch. He doesn’t blink or look away, and she can see there’s more he wants to say, but won’t. He’s spent too many years thinking that if he pushed her, she’d walk away.

His eyes drop to the whiskey in his glass, and Beth decides she’s done waiting. Patience is for pussies anyway.

“Rip, you ever think about making an honest woman out of me?”

He stills, the muscles in his jaw clenching. For a moment, the only sounds between them are the whispering of the breeze through the leaves above them. 

Beth realizes that until this moment, she has never, ever seen Rip Wheeler afraid. 

While there’s a twisted part of her that thrills to know she has such a hold on this powerful man, mostly she’s sad that she’s made him so uncertain of her. Of them.  
Good thing she’s planning to spend the rest of her life making it up to him. 

\---

Rip has heard that expression about the whole world stopping, and if it hadn’t happened to him three times before, he’d think it was a load of horse shit. 

The first time, was the day he picked up that frying pan and put his dad out of his fucking misery, about thirty minutes too late to do his mom and brother any good. 

The second, was the moment he got out of John Dutton’s truck and saw the Yellowstone Ranch for the first time, saw the white barn towering over him and the hands bustling all around.

The third, was the day he’d found Beth in the tack room where he slept at the time, when she confessed that she had killed her mom. He’d realized, in that moment, that he and Beth shared something that nobody else could ever touch. Would even want to touch. 

She saw the ugliest thing inside him, and she didn’t look away. 

He’s been trying to give her the same thing for almost twenty years.

“What did you just say to me?” Rip tries to keep his voice casual, attempts to add a little laugh there at the end, but knows he isn’t fooling either of them.

“You heard me.” Beth smiles, that little mischievous grin of hers.

“Yeah, I heard you alright. Just tryin’ to decide what the punchline is.”

“You’re not going to ruin the moment, are you, Rip?” She smiles to take the sting out of her words. 

When the breeze blows a few strands of her strawberry hair across her eyes, panic squeezes his heart. If he can’t see her eyes, he can’t tell if she’s serious. And if he can’t tell if she’s serious, he can’t see where to put his next step. 

“Come here,” he reaches for her, tugging her across his lap. Rip brushes back her hair, letting himself fall into the light green of her eyes for a moment. “You look me in the eyes if you wanna talk about us.”

He strokes a hand up her arm, letting her know it’s more a plea than a demand. 

She looks down, playing with a button on his shirt. “If I marry you, will you let me take you shopping? You been wearing the same three pairs of jeans for the last decade.”

“There you go again…” Rip trails off. There doesn’t seem to be enough breath in his chest, not enough for a man to live on, let alone enough to speak.

“What do you say, baby?”

Rip slides his hand down the curve of her neck, trying to hold himself steady. “Beth, if we’re gonna get engaged, I need you to let me do it right.” 

Her smile fades a bit, as she studies him, like it wasn’t the answer she was expecting. So Rip strokes his thumb back and forth across her collarbone and tries again.  
“I ain’t sayin’ no. Just…let me do it right.”

She shrugs and tosses back the last of her whiskey. “Don’t make me wait long now.”

“I think a little waiting would do you good.”

“Yeah, that usually doesn’t work for me.” Beth sighs and rolls over in his lap to face the creek, like she hadn’t just casually made every one of his dream come true. 

Rip can’t stop touching her. Stroking his hand down the smooth skin of her arm, brushing her hair off her neck. While she watches the sunset, he can’t take his eyes off her, his heart full to bursting.

“What changed, Beth?”

She doesn’t answer him for a long while, long enough that he starts to wonder if it was the wrong question to ask. 

“That day…in the office…” She begins, and his stomach clenches that this is the memory he brought up for her. “That motherfucker asked me ‘who I was gonna miss the most.’”

Beth goes quiet again, and he reaches for the whiskey to refill her glass, but she doesn’t touch it.

“Your face was the only thing I could see.” He feels a tremor run through her body, before she continues. “And then you came. You saved me.”

Rip wonders if she means the bullets or the ‘I love you” or both. “I always will, Beth.”

“I know.” She sits up, glass abandoned on the blanket beside her and leans in close. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. Kiss me.”

Now this is something he’s familiar with, letting her use his body as a distraction. Back on solid ground, he does his best to kiss away the memory.  
He’ll figure out the rest later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the fun thing about this, is that every since things started building between Beth and Rip, I KNEW she would be the one to propose. It was a line Rip would never cross. Every time he'd ever tried to offer Beth a piece of his heart, she'd turned away, and I think he'd come to accept that that was how it would always be. 
> 
> BUT Rip wanted those next steps. And I knew he wouldn't let her have the last word...


	3. I've Always Been Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rip tries his hand at this whole proposal thing...

Rip leans back in the chair on his new porch, wondering if the candles he lined the stairs with were too much. If Beth takes much longer to show up or if this wind picks up any more, he’s liable to burn the whole damn place down. And wouldn’t that be just his luck?

He checks his watch again. She said she’d be over by sundown. Well, the sun had set about thirty minutes ago and here he is, still waiting.

Did he read her right, yesterday?

Was it all just some game of hers, some way to test him and see if he was still hers?

He always had been, but it never stopped her from pushing his buttons to see if he’d get jealous. Like that time she went to prom with some pencil dick from the next town over. After she came home, she found Rip in the tack room, climbing right on top of him, pink fluffy dress and all.

He took another drink of his beer, trying to soothe his nerves. She’s been different since the attack in her office. He’d be lying if he said his chest didn’t swell up with pride every single time he thought about the fact that she’d texted him for help. Not her brothers and not her daddy.

Beth doesn’t ask for help, not ever, but she’d asked him. And afterward, with at least one bullet in his gut, his girl—blood streaking her face and one of her eyes swollen shut—she hadn’t left his side. Not for days.

His girl.

Fear and hope flood his body like a goddamn lightning bolt. Rip has waited for Beth for damn near twenty years, and tonight, he’s putting all his cards on the table, betting everything he’s got that she’s finally ready for him.

For them.

Of course, she’s gonna make him sweat a little first. A grin spreads across his face at the thought. He wouldn’t love her half so much if she were any easier to hold onto. So, Rip takes another swig of his beer and settles in to wait.

A few minutes later, the gate creaks open down at the end of the yard, and his heart climbs all the way up into his throat.

He wants to jump to his feet, but instead, he takes another swig of his beer and says, “you’re late,” like he hadn’t been counting every second that passed.

“Baby, the party doesn’t even start till I show up.” Beth sways into the light of his candles and his heart falls back the other way, landing somewhere down by his boots.

Her hair is up, in that loose, messy way of hers, and she’s wearing a dress, dark blue and made out of something soft and shiny. Rip imagines the feel of her curves through that fabric. Her shoulders are bare, the thin straps doing nothing to protect her from the cool Montana evening.

“Those candles for me?”

“Nah, just thought the wolves might like a little mood lighting.” Rip stands up to meet her and she winds her arms up and over his shoulders in a way that makes him feel that much more of a man. He holds her close, letting one hand slide down over the curve of her ass. “Course they’re for you.”

Beth smiles and he presses his lips to hers. They fit together, like a key into a lock. Just like they always have. The rightness of them fills him with the confidence he needs.

Pulling back, he murmurs, “thought we could sit here and look at the stars for a little bit.”

“Baby, I’m not a patient woman.” She doesn’t release his hand when he steps back, though, which is a good sign.

“Thought you might like a lil’ taste of your own medicine, sweetheart.” Beth pretends to scowl, but he sees right through it. Sitting back on the steps, he pulls her down with him. “Come here.”

She sits on the next step down between his legs and leans back against his chest, and in that moment, Rip knows he’s holding the whole entire world in his arms, so he wraps them around her, shielding her bare skin from the cool night air and does his best to commit the feeling of her to memory.

She studies the night sky, but Rip can’t take his eyes off of their fingers tangled together. He presses a kiss to her temple, wishing he was better with words. That he knew how to tell her just how much he loves her fire. That he would do anything, be anything, kill anything, just to get to come home to her like this every night for the rest of her life.

Instead, he whispers, “I’ll never get tired of this,” and hopes she hears the rest.

“It’s crazy.” Beth nods and shifts deeper into his arms. “I never thought this ranch could feel like home.”

“Does it feel like home now?” Rip holds his breath for her answer.

This is the piece he’s always known had the power to keep them apart. His soul was tied to this ranch, and she’d spent most of her life burning down anything that reminded her that hers was too.

“Well…” Beth tilts her head to the side to look up at him. “Some parts of it.”

He can’t help but press his lips to hers, reaching into his coat pocket, and she smiles into his kiss. When she turns back around, she gasps at the sight of his hand held out in front of her, a tiny, burgundy velvet box balanced on his palm.

“Open it,” he urges, when she doesn’t move. This is it. The moment he’s been waiting half his life for. If he were a praying man, he’d pray to God that she says yes.

She lifts the lid and sucks in another breath.

The ring is a marquis cut, or so the jeweler told him. All he sees is an oval with pointed ends and a sunburst of smaller diamonds haloing it from end to end. Rip holds his breath.

After a second, she reaches out to run the tips of her fingers along the edge of the box, gently, like she’s afraid it isn’t real, like someone’s going to take it away if she lets herself want it. She isn’t the only one.

“It’s beautiful,” she breaths.

“The little diamonds around the edges, those are from my mama’s ring,” Rip says, squeezing her tight against him. “The big one, that one I had to buy.”  
She lets out a small sound that’s half sob, half-laugh. “I had no idea you had such good taste in jewelry.”

“Oh, I’m full of surprises.”

“It’s beautiful, Rip.” The waver in her voice makes his heart soar. Maybe he’d done this right, after all. “How…how did you get this made so fast?”

“Beth, I had it made years ago.”

“You what?” She turns around and Rips stomach twists up at the tears shining in her eyes. He hopes like hell that those are happy tears.

“You really gonna make me say it?”

She looks up at him, green eyes swimming with emotions he’s afraid to name, and Rip knows she needs to hear it. All of it.

This might be the most scared he’s ever been in his whole life, but he would lay down on hot coals just so she could walk across his back to the other side. There isn’t any part of him that he wouldn’t sacrifice for Beth Dutton, not his body, not his heart, and certainly, not a little of his pride.

Rip pushes to his feet, forcing himself to let go of her just long enough to come round and face her. Looking her square in the eye, making sure she can see how much he means every word.

“Beth, I had that ring made for you. Five years ago, right after Christmas. You remember the one?”

She dashes the back of her hand across her eyes and sniffs. “Had a huge fight with my father because he wanted me to move home. I left the next day.”  
“Mmhmm.” Rip nods, giving her a second to think back on that day. “You remember what you told me before you left?”

“I told you I wouldn’t wait for you.” Beth doesn’t look away when she says it. Out of all the knives she’s left in his heart over the years, that one stings to this day.

“Remember anything else?”

“I said, ‘maybe someday.’”

“Maybe someday.” Rip nods, but she must not know what those words meant to him, because the crease in her brow gets a little deeper. “It was the way you said it, Beth. You put your hand right here over my heart,” he rubs his chest at the memory, “and you whispered, ‘maybe someday.’”

“That’s all? That’s all I gave you?”

“It gave me hope, sweetheart. It’s all I ever needed. Hope that if I waited long enough, if I worked hard enough to protect this place, if your dad trusted me enough, that maybe, someday, you’d come back. For me.”

Her chin trembles and Rip knows he has her.

So he takes her hands in his, her slim fingers still wrapped around the open velvet box, and drops to one knee, right there in the dirt at the foot of the home her daddy had just given him.

“Beth Dutton, I’ve loved you since I was fifteen and you told me I could watch you walk away.” She chokes out a laugh and a calmness falls over him. This is right. They are right. “Well, I been watching my whole life, and I’m hoping…well, I’m hoping you’re done walking.”

The candlelight flickers across her face, shining off the tears on her cheeks, highlighting the smile starting to pull at the corners of her mouth, and Rip is sure he has never seen anything so beautiful.

“Will you let me call you ‘wife?’”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.” Nodding, she pushes herself to a wobbly stand, and Rip rises with her, crushing her to his chest.

“I love you.” She pulls his mouth down to hers, the salt of her tears mixing with their kiss.

He breaks away, grinning from ear to ear. “Gimme that thing.” She holds the box while he pulls out the ring, then tosses it off into the dark.

“You might need that.”

“I won’t.” She holds out her left hand, fingers shaking, till he takes them and holds them steady. “I’m never taking it off.”

“Fine by me.” He slides the diamond onto her finger and, goddamn, does it look right to have his ring on her hand.

“You’re mine, Rip.”

“I always been yours, honey.”

“And I’m yours.”

“Say it again.” His voice creaks a little on the words.

“I’m yours, baby. I’m yours.”

All those years of waiting and hoping and loving her. All those years of being asked to drive her to the airport, not knowing when or if she’d ever come back. The only thing he had ever wanted more than John Dutton’s respect was the love of this woman right here.

Rip throws his head back and laughs. When he can finally catch his breath, he presses his lips to hers, and they’re so soft he can’t help but kiss her deeper. Rip is going to get to do this for the rest of his life. He gets to love Beth, out in the open. He can kiss these lips whenever he wants to. He can wake up next to her every morning, and come home to her having a whiskey on the porch steps while she watches him walk across the field.

Rip kisses her till her knees go weak, and then he scoops her up into his arms and heads for the porch stairs.

He really should put out those candles, but first, he needs to make love to his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't it crazy how when a character/story is so well-written, you understand things about them and know things, without it playing out on the screen? I knew the most meaningful object Rip could possibly give Beth to show her how much he loved her, how serious he was about her, was his mother's ring. In my mind, he'd saved it since he was a kid (not the creepier version that plays out on the show). 
> 
> I also wondered if he would give that ring to Beth without altering it somehow. It was a gift from the man who killed his whole family, who Rip in turn killed. Was that a symbol he'd want her to have? I thought a more romantic idea would be taking this piece of his mom and giving it new life, before giving it to Beth. 
> 
> Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for S4 to see if/how that all plays out.
> 
> Working on that next (steamier) scene now. Hope to post it soon!


End file.
